This blog by Spencer Jardine endeavors to focus on information-literacy topics. Please share your own comments on needing, finding, evaluating, and using information. Thank you for visiting my site. If you have any ideas on future blog posts, let me know.

Friday, September 11, 2009

This afternoon I came across a blog with some new videos that might be of interest to you: Information Literacy meets Library 2.0/. One video describes the differences between scholarly journals and magazines. Another talks about the difference between Google and databases. The last one discusses the differences between respectable newspapers and tabloids.

I like how the two librarians square off against each other in these debates, and I like their British accents, though at times they vary their volumes/inflections so that I have a hard time hearing and the one on the right (Pete?) is so soft spoken that it is often hard to hear him.

As far as humor goes, they are lacking in that department, but the videos are still well done and thought out. Librarians who give instruction might consider using these videos to teach their students some of the information-literacy basics. Be forewarned, though, that the databases your library uses may differ from the ones used by Al and Pete at their library.

This outlines a meeting librarians had at Idaho State. We talked about a library instructor's responsibilities. The presentation does not capture the good in-person discussion we had, so I wanted to expand on a few things. One group identified a library instructor's responsibilities in the following terms:

Instill in the student a spirit of collaborative independence: - Independent learner/researcher - Know tools to ask more intelligent questions - Comfortable in the Library - Collaborate with other researchers, including other libraries

Students ought to become somewhat independent, and when they cannot answer or find what they need, then they should be able to articulate what they need in an intelligent way. Ideally, we want students to become young scholars and work closely as colleagues with professors, librarians, and other researchers. Library instructors can play a role in accomplishing this lofty goal.

Here's an expanded version on the bit that talks about working with the full-time faculty: "Add value by collaborating with the instructor. Work with them. You are a guest speaker in their class. What does the instructor want you to get out of your library instruction session?" Communication needs to take place in order for librarian to succeed in the classroom where they are the guest speaker for just one or two days out of the whole semester.